But I have evidence-backed arguments about why it should have an impact. I have inconclusive evidence, like the failure of the WHPA. And you don't have any direct evidence that it doesn't have an impact, either. So it's not like I'm tilting at windmills and you're basing your position on solid evidence. I just can't be sure because human societies are complicated, and I recognize that.

You say that moderates are on board, and that counting moderates support is 70%. But Joe Manchin is that kind of moderate, and he was not on board! If you asked him if he wanted Roe to be overturned, his answer was no. If you ask him if he wants to reinstate the equivalent, his answer is yes.

So either your 70% number needs to go down, or you need to accept that WHPA was overreach that may have particularly pleased the extreme but which was poor tactics.

Personally, I think WHPA is better than Roe, but I wouldn't expect anyone who is comfortable with Roe but no more to accept WHPA. I certainly wouldn't expect that without listening to their concerns, treating them respectfully, taking them seriously, and explaining to them why WHPA is more humane than Roe (e.g. by highlighting case studies where restrictions that were okay by Roe but not by WHPA ended up causing suffering, misery, and/or death).

And if we can't get the support for legislative-Roe right now, but we could get support for first trimester (which even gets Dancova on board, right?), that's still over 90% of abortions!

The idea that you can exploit the loss of rights of the 90% in order to try to get better rights for the 9% is...pretty questionable, morally.

You have mentioned Kansas several times, but I'm not convinced that you understand the Kansas result. Do you know these three things about the vote?

(1) In what way was the Kansas anti-abortion ballot measure anti-libertarian?

(2) If you rank all states from most pro-choice to most anti-abortion (e.g. by percentage of people who thought Roe should be overturned), where, roughly, does Kansas rank? (Massachusetts is #1; Mississippi and West Virginia are approximately tied for #49/50, according to one set of polls I found. Where is Kansas, do you think? Or know?)

(3) With the measure defeated, are Kansas' abortion laws consistent with or more restrictive than what WHPA would have allowed?

You didn't literally demonize Dancova (i.e. you didn't say, "you are a demon"). You did charge him with writing something misleading and pointless; and you did imply (but did not directly state) that he was supporting viewing women as brood mares (the people you directly charged with this are being demonized), deserved to be called all the things that he was (like the brood mare people, I guess), and should get the fuck away from your bodily autonomy. While not quite demonizing, that's certainly a highly combative stance rather than a persuasive one.

You gave a MLK quote in support of your position, but it...assiduously avoids the kind of targeted judgmental language than you employ. It is (justifiably) harsh but it is general in its harshness allowing people to individually walk away from the position of evil and towards the position of virtue without being tied to their position by virtue of being part of some identifiable group. And it does not employ language that specifically paints others as monstrous (c.f. "brood mare"--charging that someone deeply dehumanizes others is, itself, deeply dehumanizing). If you had sounded like MLK, I wouldn't have objected. Indeed, other posters did sound more like MLK and I did not object.

There are two aspects to the marriage rights issue. Part one is societal acceptance: that was achieved through niceness, almost entirely. (This is not the only way to societal acceptance, but this is how it worked this time.) Part two is legislative: "Power concedes nothing without a demand," as Frederick Douglass aptly said. But this shouldn't be taken to mean that the more outspoken and extreme you are, the more you get your way. Rather, it means that if you want something you do have to ask for it. So there, yes, the legislative demands, including protests, have been somewhat important--but far less important than the change in societal attitudes (coupled with the awareness of what was desired/"demanded"). Gay marriage rights activists protested and protested and protested and protested. At first they got nowhere, for decades. Then they occasionally started winning victories in a highly liberal state here and there...and then when opinion had shifted enough, suddenly, in the early 2010s, a bunch of states legalized gay marriage...not coincidentally starting right after the concept was more broadly accepted in society than not. (Crossover point was about 2010.) The demand was clear for decades. What was missing was broad support. What brought broad support was empathy and understanding.

Having a demand is important. For instance, the Black Lives Matter movement forgot this step. Despite the largest public protests in the country's history (by number, probably #2 by proportion), there was no clearly-stated legislative agenda, and, surprise, surprise, practically nothing has changed legislatively. The most actionable slogan ("demand") was "defund the police". A fair number of police departments were (partially) defunded...mostly with predictably bad results for the communities supposedly most oppressed by the police, because you can defund police quickly but building robust and effective alternative social services is slow. (A number of cities subsequently re-increased police funding at the request of black community leaders.) If the slogan had instead been something like, "Invest and enrich, don't occupy and shoot," (except more brief; I don't claim to be an expert sloganeer), or maybe "Criminal justice reform NOW!", a lot more could have been accomplished.

But with abortion rights, the demand is clear enough. The question is: which specific demand gets made, and can you get enough support for that one?

Finally, regarding dominance hierarchies, it's extraordinarily important to distinguish two scenarios.

One is where your side is oppressed; you do not have power, save perhaps moral power, and yet you still want somehow to gain your rights in the face of this dominance hierarchy. This was the case with civil rights, but is not the case with abortion rights.

Another is where your side has power--maybe even more power than anyone else--but it is not enough to achieve what you want to achieve; and the other side promotes a dominance hierarchy view that you don't agree with and don't want to be bound by. This is the case with abortion rights.

Confusing the two will lead to a highly inappropriate strategy. The first situation is always inherently tenuous and risky. The chance of success is modest. The second situation is much better: you have a very good chance of success unless, for instance, you blow it by taking the high-risk strategies that might be the only hope for the first case.